This is a season of tradition.

And tradition matters in the culture of a family.

It’s the fabric and the face of a family.

It’s what we do.

It’s the stuff we do that makes us who we are.

It’s the story we tell.

“Every year we make monster cookies.”

“Every year we see the lights and eat donuts.”

And it’s what makes us feel like family.

It’s the stuff that says Keigley or Johnson or insert-your-own-name.

It’s the ties that bind.

And it’s okay when circumstances shift or a family decides to begin a new tradition or to let an old one fade.

But it’s hard too.

It hurts.

And it’s even more painful when the traditions you love are taken from you.

When the brokenness rises up and crashes against the lovely and the treasured moments of a family.

When the traditions hurt as much as they heal because they are a clear and vivid reminder of What Was and What Is No Longer.

And they force us to decide – do we cling to tradition?

Do we make do?

Do we re-create?

And the answer is sometimes a yes and sometimes a no.

And lots of times it’s a depends.  Or maybe just for this year.

The wading through the questions is the sticky part, of course.

The wading in and the getting dirty and the pondering a big picture while remembering that you kind of live in the smaller picture is all a weighty and wearying process made more weighty and more wearying by the nature of the season surrounding us.

This isn’t a ramble or a post with a solid conclusion today.

I’m sorry to disappoint.

It’s more of an acknowledgement.

It’s an I see you there, slouching in the middle and hard on the edges and soft on the inside and bent a little lower but not broken and I know this nostalgic time is hard but it’s sweet too and the heavy – although it comes with a price, also comes with a gift – and the fact that the gift is tiny and a little hard to see and it gets lost in the tinsel and the tissue paper just makes it all the more lovely when it alights on you for a solid minute or two in between the dishwasher breaking and the dog stealing food from the table and the laundry gaining a will of its own.

The traditions can almost break you but the light is so inviting and I just hope you train your eyes to see it first and longer than any of the other glaring bits parading all brash and shiny for your attention.

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